Author: Madison Cox

for me, the best moment in a movie really depends on music. my favorite moments typically have songs i love in them; for example, my favorite scene in the film speech and debate is a montage with “rollercoaster” by bleachers playing over it. two of my favorite scenes in the perks of being a wallflower are the dance scene with “come on eileen” by dexy’s midnight runners and the tunnel scene with “heroes” by david bowie (speak of the devil “heroes” just started playing on youtube). part of why i love these moments is that i love the songs that accompany them.

music is something that i always have and always will love, which means the moments in film that i love often revolve around soundtrack. in my opinion, good films have to have good soundtracks. having just the right song playing at just the right time can turn one normal scene into a moment that the viewer will never forget.  a song can be any old song you hear on the radio, but if its opening chords start to play at during the climax of a scene, the song begins to represent something bigger than just another song you hear on the radio. it comes to represent that moment, that specific feeling you felt the moment you heard it in the scene.

the best moments in films are the ones where the music perfectly sets the tone of the scene. they’re the ones where an emotional moment becomes magnified by lyrics and melody. these moments take a song you may or may not know and turn it into something that will forever remind you of three friends speeding through a tunnel feeling infinite, the moment two characters share a first kiss and change everything between them forever.

in my world, music means everything. this also means that music changes everything. music can make happiness and love just as much as it can make heartbreak and despair. it can turn a day on its head, and the same applies to film. a happy song can completely reinvent a scene that may not be entirely happy and vice versa.

music can change the world, and it does. it can build up mountains and break down walls. it can completely revolutionize the life of just one person or an entire community. music changes us, so doesn’t it make sense that music changes film too?

so i love knick-knacks.

knick-knacks and keepsakes and mementos and little things that may not mean anything but can still contain multitudes. i collect ticket stubs and doodles from my notes in class and fortunes from fortune cookies. i collect bits and bobs and everything in-between.

i collect things.

i collect memories.

now call me sentimental, call me a hoarder, call me whatever you see fit. i collect the things that help me remember. i collect confetti and tickets and wristbands from concerts i’ve been to because i can still see the confetti falling through the air and the ticket being scanned and the wristband being secured onto my wrist. i collect paper fortunes to remind myself of the little proverbs that keep me grounded. i collect the things that help me remember.

i don’t know when my little knack for keeping these things started. maybe it was keeping the fortunes in my phone’s translucent case after forgetting to throw them away. maybe it was the little build-a-bear heart i used to carry in the front-right pocket of my jeans on test days because i was sure it would give me good luck.

maybe it was seeing all the little bits and pieces of life that no one seemed to bat an eye at and decided to give them purpose after all.

the little plastic and metal bits are only enough to fill an old jewelry box, and the paper fortunes house in a little starbucks frappuchino glass. but i also have the glass bottle from the very first orange cream soda i had after my grandfather died. i still have the glass coke bottle i bought from the coca-cola museum in vicksburg where it was first bottled. i still have the glass dr. pepper bottle i bought at the piggly wiggly across the street on the last day of msa art camp.

i keep the things most people throw away because i tie far more meaning to them than i should.

there’s this quote that goes “nostalgia is a dirty liar that insists things were better than they seemed.” it sticks with me years after first reading its words. i’ve always been one to romanticize, to idolize, to reminisce. the past has always been this distant little paradise, a vacation destination i revisit only in late nights and dead silences.

so, maybe nostalgia is a liar. maybe keeping all these little trinkets is just my way of telling myself things were better than they actually were. maybe keeping the happy things is how i try to forget the sad things.

maybe i just like having little reminders to show me how far i’ve come since first collecting this or that, and maybe they remind me of all the happy little things i have left to collect in my life.

I’m sure that most people who hear the phrase “comfort zones” automatically link it to “stepping out of” them, crossing the boundaries of our own familiarity and security into something entirely undiscovered. That phrase reminds us of leaving what we deem comfortable and stepping into new territory, whether that be trying new foods or going skydiving or moving away from home for the first time. But comfort zones are our homes; leaving home or trying new things can be scary for a lot of people, and it is. We don’t want to introduce ourselves to new environments and experiences because change can be this big terrifying thing that pulls us away from the homes that make us feel safe.

In a sense, comfort becomes synonymous with happiness. We associate what is familiar to us with what makes us happy, what makes us content. Happiness is familiar, it’s simple and clean and inexplicably comfortable. Stepping out of our comfort zones could mean stepping out of our happiness. It means stepping out of the sense of safety, the sense of home.

Surely, this would ring true for everyone, right?

Unless, of course, some of us don’t feel comfortable in our own homes. Unless that sense of security and safety and home that we’re supposed to feel doesn’t feel complete. Like that fulfillment we’re supposed to have from familiarity and comfort just isn’t there.

And we crave it. We desire more than anything to finally feel at home in something, anything. We desire that sense of belonging, that sense of family that makes us not want to leave our comfort zones in the first place. We desire that happiness. 

Some of us find that happiness in certain hobbies. Some of us find that happiness in friends or lovers or family. Some of us even find that happiness when we leave home to discover a new place to belong.

I found that happiness 240.1 miles from home. I found more comfort being surrounded by complete strangers than I ever felt in a town that I hadn’t even seen. Never in my life have I felt more comfortable that sitting right here, typing on a computer named Clementine, listening to one of my favorite artists sing about leaving home.

People may ask me what is was like leaving home for the first time. Friends of my mom may say something about “stepping out of your comfort zone”, and I’ll smile and nod and agree with them because I don’t truly know how to describe just how at home I feel without being back home. I can’t describe how the kids I hardly know already feel like family or how naturally my adoration for them comes.

And I certainly can’t describe why this place feels more like home that the house I’ve lived in for the past seven years of my life.

To me, home is my comfort zone. It’s where I’m free to be authentically me. I couldn’t be authentically me in a town where I’m not allowed to walk around town with my friends. I couldn’t be authentically me in a town where I couldn’t be true to myself.

But my home is here. My home is these old walls restored from decayed academia. My home is the ramen noodles I cook in the microwave when I don’t want what’s been served for dinner. My home is walking around town with people who are here for the exact same reasons I am.

Comfort zones’ nomenclature comes from just that: they’re where we feel most comfortable. And I feel more comfortable in a town I still have two years left to see explore than in one I spent seven years doing nothing in.

This is my home. This is my comfort zone. And nothing can take away the overwhelming sense of complete and utter happiness that I feel here.

I love music, always have, always will. For a lot of people, music is a safe space, a place of comfort and security for when days are bad or times are tough. For me, music is home. There’s never a time when I don’t at least have some little tune stuck in my head. In my mind, music is always playing, even when I can’t hear it. It helps me to think, it helps me to write. It helps me to be me.

With all that music I listen to, you’d think it’d be hard to pick favorites. And it is; I have playlist upon playlist of songs I love enough to call favorites.

But some songs are too good to be just any old favorite. Some songs can reach inside you and twist your insides around and leave you on the other side a different person than you were before, and they still manage to leave that twisty feeling every time you listen to them.

My favorite songs are relative, superficial; but the songs I need to breathe are more important and real than anything else in the world. These songs often come from the deepest parts of ourselves, the parts that we don’t often let other people see. The songs that we hold nearest and dearest to our hearts are the ones that let themselves in without even needing to pick the locks on our hearts because we’ve opened the doors the moment we heard the first line. The songs we come to love wholeheartedly are the ones that help us the most. We discover them at times of high emotion, where that be euphoria or dysphoria or anything in-between. They stick with us, and we stick with them.

The songs that I fall head-over-heels in love with come from nostalgia and reminiscence and longing. They come from isolation and destruction and despair.

But they also come from joy and love and hope.

These are ten songs that came to me at the point in my life when I needed them most. Some are new, some are old, some are dark, some are gold.

But these songs are the ones that continue to make me who I am.

1. starlight // muse
2. oasis+savannah+baby // relient k
3. secret for the mad // dodie clark
4. i wanna get better // bleachers
5. she lays down // the 1975
6. saturn // sleeping at last
7. rivers and roads // the head and the heart
8. home // edward sharpe and the magnetic zeroes
9. hey jude // the beatles
10. heathrow // catfish and the bottlemen